Archive for August, 2014

Some of you have probably seen this (I’ve posted this on all my blogs, plus several Facebook pages, including our troupe/studio page Kamala Chaand Dance Company, or my dance page, Adara Din), so my apologies for this clogging up your feeds.

Well… I’m only kind of sorry – because this is an awesome thing.

We are starting a community program called ‘Our Dancing Daughters’. This program is designed to support at-risk girls, teens, and women with self empowerment education through dance (a lot like SEEDs). There are, currently, no programs like this in our area.

Troupe members will be taking part in crisis prevention training so that we are able to coach the girls and young women through issues that they may be struggling with. We will work with a financial planner who will assist the girls and young women with learning how to make a budget, check their credit, balance a checkbook and plan their lives financially.

We will be implementing an accountability system whereby the girls and young women who are in school will have a regular check in with a partner and with one of the KCDC instructors about how they are doing in school and what they need to work on in order to excel.

Additionally, we will be aiding the girls in finding scholarships and programs to help them with their education after high school.

Our aim is to help women and girls who are the most at risk, to become leaders in their community through self empowerment and the building of their self esteem and self reliance.

We’ve started a fundraiser – it’s what all the cool kids are doing these days.

We’re working on getting a slightly larger studio space in our building, in order to accommodate a larger number of students. We are also looking for seed money to start the scholarship program, as well as being able to supply basic costuming for the scholarship recipients (zils, skirt, and an Our Dancing Daughters logo tank top).

This is something very important to me, personally, as I dealt with severe self-image issues and eating disorders as a young woman. I now know I am not alone, and having a support group in dance has been nothing short of amazing.

If you are able, please consider donating to our Gofundme fundraiser.
If you aren’t, but would still like to help, we’d love it if you could share our page with others.
Potato salad dude raised thousands of dollars on a joke; I think we can raise a bit to help our community.

TL;DR?
Visit the link and see the cool stuff you can get for helping at-risk girls.